The proliferation of cloud-based services and platforms continues to increase. Specifically, cloud-based storage systems have impacted the way personal and corporate information (e.g., content) are stored, and has also impacted the way personal and corporate information are shared and managed. One benefit of using a cloud-based storage service is efficient use of electronic content storage facilities and computing resources for storing digital content (e.g., “files”). For example, a cloud-based storage service might store content from a client in Europe in a storage facility in Europe, yet the same cloud-based storage service might also store content from a client in the U.S. in a storage facility in the U.S. Where and how content is stored and accessed is specified in part by storage policies defined by various stakeholders in the cloud-based storage ecosystem (e.g., the client, the cloud-based storage service provider, the storage facility provider, etc.) based on various policy objectives (e.g., security, accessibility, loss protection, cost, etc.). These stakeholders desire to have storage policy flexibility in order to continually meet or exceed changing objectives.
As the number of content storage facility options and complexity of policy objectives increase, however, maintaining the desired storage policy flexibility can be difficult. Some legacy approaches provide to clients an application programming interface (e.g., “API”) for each available storage facility. Such legacy approaches require that the client determine a priori the target storage facility and develop facility-specific storage commands and policies. These approaches also do not consider varying source attributes (e.g., client location, enterprise service level agreement or “SLA”, enterprise tariffs, etc.) when determining storage policies to apply. Further, such approaches result in large, customized programming code bases that are difficult to maintain (e.g., update as physical storage components are changed). Other legacy approaches provide to clients a translation of storage commands targeted for one storage facility to storage commands for another storage facility. This approach is also based on facility-specific commands and policies, and fails to consider source attributes when applying such policies.
The problem to be solved is therefore rooted in technological limitations of the legacy approaches. Improved techniques, in particular improved application of technology, are needed to address the problem of using various cloud-based content storage facilities with facility-agnostic and source-aware commands and policies. More specifically, the technologies applied in the aforementioned legacy approaches fail to achieve sought-after capabilities of the herein disclosed techniques for accessing multiple content storage facilities using source-aware storage policies. What is needed is a technique or techniques to improve the application and efficacy of various technologies as compared with the application and efficacy of legacy approaches.